AIA Honor Awards

2013 AIA Honor Awards: Centra Metropark

Iselin, N.J. / Kohn Pedersen Fox, New York

This LEED Platinum project reimagines the suburban New Jersey office park with a visually arresting design. Tasked with renovating an 110,000-square-foot, 1980s office building, the architects used a state-of-the-art curtainwall and an asymmetrical tree-column and truss support to extend the fourth floor. A lightwell carved into this floor floods the interior with natural light. Large pyramid-shaped landscape forms dot the exterior, signaling to passing cars that this space is new and different.

Jury: “The impact that this building has on the parkway has resulted in improvements of neighboring structures, proving that design can have a ripple effect in an otherwise mundane context.”

Client: “To differentiate, to be compelling, and to be memorable: Three statements that drive our development decisions at Hampshire Real Estate Companies. Kohn Pedersen Fox delivered on all of them with Centra Metropark. Nowhere in New Jersey has there been such a dynamic transformation executed in the commercial office environment that has received universal accolades from all constituencies.” —Todd Anderson, executive vice president and principal, Hampshire Real Estate Companies

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About the Author

Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson has been a contributing editor with ARCHITECT since 2008. Her articles and essays have appeared in The New York Times, Metropolis, Fast Company's Co.Design, and The Atlantic's CityLab, among many other publications.